RFI Submits Report on Landscape of Religious Freedom in America to Religious Liberty Commission

This week, Ismail Royer, RFI’s Director of Islam and Religious Freedom, submitted to the White House Religious Liberty Commission an in-depth report on the landscape of religious freedom violations in America. Royer presented the report in his capacity as a member of the commission’s Lay Leaders Advisory Board. 

The report, Cases and Trends Implicating Religious Liberty in the United States, reveals several categories of religious liberty violations that continue to stand in the way of fulfilling the promise of religious liberty. Among the categories of violations the report identifies are interference with the autonomy of religious institutions, infringement of parental rights, and hate-motivated violence against persons and institutions.

The report also recommends cases of such violations for the commission to consider investigating, and identifies proposed witnesses for the commission to call at upcoming hearings. Such cases include:

• Montgomery County, Maryland Public Schools (MCPS) is refusing to graduate at least two students because it denied their parents, who are traditional Christians, a right to opt their children out of religiously-objectionable LGBTQ instruction in a mandatory health class (the “Jane Doe” case) (p. 16).
• A Minneapolis-area public school district is refusing to give Christian and Muslim parents a real (as opposed to illusory) opportunity to opt their children out of religiously-objectionable material aimed at changing their beliefs on sexual orientation and gender (p. 13).
• The Loudoun County, Virginia, public school district is punishing Christian and Muslim students for their faith-based objections to a female using the boys locker room with them, and discriminating against the Christian students by dropping its disciplinary proceedings only as to the Muslim student (p. 19).

The report proposes several other cases to investigate in other areas, including church autonomy, religious land use, and employment discrimination. It also includes a suite of proposed recommendations to the Administration to address these cases and others.

The Religious Liberty Commission was created by the White House in June with a mandate to “vigorously enforce the historic and robust protections for religious liberty enshrined in Federal law.” Its work includes investigating and recommending policies to protect religious freedom.

Download the report here.

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